A Certain Magical Index II

Overview

My review of A Certain Magical Index II is here just in time for A Certain Magical Index III… episode 7. So close! However, despite just finishing this season, I still have to watch A Certain Scientific Railgun S before moving on to Index III.

I’ve heard that Railgun S is supposed to be watched before Index II, but Railgun S came out afterwards, so that’s the order I’ll be watching it in. However, I also watched the first season of Railgun before the first season of Index, so I’ve already screwed up the watch order anyway.

As the second season of Index, Index II primarily follows Kamijou Touma and Index, but other characters such as Mikoto Misaka and Accelerator take the lead for some episodes. Generally, the episodes following Kamijou and Index are the worst.

Misaka’s episodes are pretty good, which makes sense because Railgun was better than Index. The episodes following Accelerator, however, are the best of the season. Despite starting off as an antagonist, he becomes a protagonist over the course of this season, and there’s even a season focusing on him coming in the future.

For this season, the first half primarily followed Kamijou, and so was a struggle for me to get through. Without going into too much detail because it bores me, this portion of the season focused on the various churches fighting it out, with Kamijou always in the center of it.

I think there are a few reasons why I don’t like the magic side of the RailDex series, but the main two are the lack of explanations and the character designs. When the magic side of this series is being explored, nothing is actually explained in a way that makes any sense.

Because of this, the magic system isn’t much of a system, and that makes it uninteresting to watch. On the other hand, the science side of the series is flushed out well with different abilities which are fully explained and a power level system from 0 to 6.

For example, we know that the magician Stiyl uses some sort of cards to create various types of fire magic, but other than that we don’t know anything about the scope of his capabilities or how exactly his magic works. On the other hand, we know every little detail about how Accelerator’s vector ability works.

Not only does the science side of this series make more sense, but it also looks better. For some unknown reason, all of the church members in this series look like edgy goth kids or something. They’re covered in crazy piercings, wear completely unreasonable clothing, and commit genocide.

Well, I guess that last thing does make sense for the church.

Misaka clone No. 20001, Last Order

By comparison, the latter half of the season is almost like a completely different series. Sure, there are still crazy members of the church running around Academy City, such as the woman with the 4-foot long tongue piercing, but for the most part the focus shifts to the science side.

It’s here that the better main character, Accelerator, really shines. Kamijou always wants to save everyone, which is a boring concept in and of itself, but as I mentioned in my review of the first season of Index, his fighting style isn’t entertaining to watch. Accelerator is his foil.

Not only is Accelerator the strongest esper in Academy City, but he also seems to have no issue with killing anyone who gets in his way. Over the course of the series we see him start to value life more after he essentially adopts Mikasa clone No. 20001, but his bloodlust still remains.

The fact that Accelerator has no problem going all out against his opponents makes his fights a lot more interesting to watch. And, due to the time limit on his ability, he’s not able to just spam vectors at people. Sometimes he has to do things a bit differently, like use his enemies’ own weapons against them.

Catching Up With The Characters

Throughout this season, Kamijou is continuing to battle it out with the church’s magicians and mainly stays away from the science side of things just as he did in the first season. While Index is typically somewhere nearby, she plays less of a role with him in this season.

Some of the things Kamijou does are save a church member from warring factions, take down a crystal fleet of battleships in Italy, and fight off multiple church higher-ups who come to destroy Academy city. You know, just the usual stuff.

If Kamijou represents the magic-fighting side of this season, then Misaka represents the neutral territory. She fights some enemies from the science side of things a bit towards the end, but for the most part, the episodes in which she plays major roles are more slice of life.

And, while slice of life may not be action-packed, it’s still better than anything Kamijou gets himself into. I can honestly say I’d rather watch Misaka try to get a new frog keychain for her phone than watch Kamijou punch nuns in the face.

The final side left is the science-fighting side, and this is where Accelerator comes in. We typically see Kamijou as the hero because he’s fighting against the magicians to save Academy City from external threats, but Accelerator is doing just as much work.

However, instead of fighting external threats, Accelerator is fighting to save Academy City from internal threats. These threats come in multiple forms such as the Level 0 terrorist organization, Skill Out, or the organization which controls the city from the shadows and once used Accelerator as a test subject.

By the end of the season, these three characters are all working together whether they know it or not. There appears to be a war coming to academy city, and each of the main characters are fighting to stop it in their own ways. I assume in Index III we’ll see them all working together more.

Conclusion

I know the summary part of this review was fairly vague, but I started watching this season about two months ago and don’t really remember many details from the first half because it bored me so much. The latter half, especially the final five episodes or so, was much better, but unfortunately not good enough to raise my rating.

With that said, A Certain Magical Index II is a 5/10. Those final episodes may have been 7s, but there were 24 episodes total, so they don’t really have much weight when it comes to the overall score.

This is lower than my rating for the first season, and part of the explanation for that may be that I watched these two seasons back to back. By the time I was done with the first season, I was tired of the series, and this may have skewed my view of the first half of this season.

But, what did you think of this season of Index? And, are you currently watching Index III? I probably won’t be getting to that until long after it’s over, so let me know what you think of it so far in the comments.

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One Reply to “A Certain Magical Index II”

Basically the problem with the adaptation is that each arc and each character is devoid of characterization and depth, nor there is a good rhythm between one arc and the next, there must be time to rest the viewer and can assimilate what is happening, also for the characters that really Touma in the novels one could identify with, while here it is too boring. All this problem occurs from the first season making the last ones also drag, but much worse to have now more characters and more factions fighting, a lot of plot that happens on the screen, but totally disconnected from the show, JC staff turned each index arc into one series of cyclic and repetitive acts practically feel all the same when it should not be like that, but what they never forget is the otaku pandering can not miss the girl who hardly knows touma and she wants to get closer.